Jack London, Permaculturist

Jack London was arguably the first modern American permaculturist. The word, permaculture, of course, was not yet invented. But London brought ideas he had learned from Asia about soil health and swales, nitrogen fixing crops and green manures. He even tried his hand at coppicing Eucalyptus, which would have been a good idea if Eucalyptus hadn't sucked as timber. Here are some pic's I took at a recent outing to the Jack London State Park in California.

Above is the coppice forest. For various reasons this attempt failed commercially, but you can see that, 100 years later the trees are still thriving. If the park would cut them and use them, as coppice should be maintained, they would do Jack London's memory a favor.

Above, a couple of pic's of some of London's thoughts on the subject. He mentions 40 Centuries of Farmers, so perhaps, probably, he had read King's Farmer's of Forty Centuries before he started his own agro-ecological farming enterprise. 

The two photos above show the extensive work London's laborers did in his fields. Though they're not seen easily in the pics, there are rows and rows of terraces. London's specific aim was to undo decades of soil degradation by terracing his fields, thereby catching the nutrients and water when it rained, rather than let it all run off somewhere else. 

London was clearly ahead of his time. His writings on the early 20th C. oligarchy could be cut and pasted into today's news. I wonder if he wrote about the connection between freedom and independent food production? Clearly, he was on the cutting edge of what we would today call permaculture.

Another early mention of permaculture-ish thoughts is in Shakespeare's The Tempest (Act 2, Scene 1, Page 8): Marooned on a verdant island the trusted Advisor Gonzalo is teased for what he would do if he had control of the island and were to raise a society on it...

	GONZALO If I could colonize this island, my lord—
	ANTONIO He’d sow ’t with nettle seed.	ANTONIO He’d cultivate weeds on it.
	SEBASTIAN      Or docks, or mallows.	SEBASTIAN Or thorn-bushes.
	GONZALO And were the king on ’t, what would I do?	GONZALO And if I were king of it, you know what I’d do?
	SEBASTIAN 'Scape being drunk for want of wine.	SEBASTIAN He wouldn’t get drunk much, since there’s no wine here.
	GONZALO I' th' commonwealth I would by contraries Execute all things. For no kind of traffic Would I admit. No name of magistrate. Letters should not be known. Riches, poverty, And use of service—none. Contract, succession, Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard—none. No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil. No occupation. All men idle, all. And women too, but innocent and pure. No sovereignty—	GONZALO In my kingdom I’d do everything differently from the way it’s usually done. I wouldn’t allow any commerce. There’d be no officials or administrators. There’d be no schooling or literature. There’d be no riches, no poverty, and no servants—none. No contracts or inheritance laws; no division of the land into private farms, no metal-working, agriculture, or vineyards. There’d be no work. Men would have nothing to do, and women also—but they’d be innocent and pure. There’d be no kingship—
	SEBASTIAN     Yet he would be king on ’t.	SEBASTIAN He wants to be king in a place with no kingship.
	ANTONIO The latter end of his commonwealth forgets the beginning.	ANTONIO Yes, he’s getting a bit confused.
	GONZALO All things in common nature should produce Without sweat or endeavor. Treason, felony, Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine, Would I not have. But nature should bring forth Of its own kind all foison, all abundance, To feed my innocent people.	GONZALO Everything would be produced without labor, and would be shared by all. There’d be no treason, crimes, or weapons. Nature would produce its harvests in abundance, to feed my innocent people.

Clearly, Gonzalo would be a permaculturist were he alive today. That Shakespeare writes about it, colors an already colorful character with it, shows that the topic of going back to the land was important in England at the time.

Which makes me think I should write my treatise on how Shakespeare popularized the most noble of human callings, being human, humanist, even, long before anyone else. Sure, John Donne may have been his contemporary, Thomas Aquinas predates him, Descartes comes a few years after, but Shakespeare was bringing jokes about how the devil is in-your-endo to the masses (neatly coupled with arguments for the beauty of universal compassion--I'm thinking Lear's conversion, here) centuries before William Faulkner, let alone Tennessee Williams showed up. But I digress.

Back to the land, growing your own, freedom through independent food production, these ideas are clearly as old as some of the oldest human stories. The Adam and Eve fable is much less about our Fall from the Graces of a thinking, acting, MonoGod, than it is an admonition against eating apples.

Har, right? No, really.

The Adam and Eve story is about whether or not our forest dwelling ancestors were going to be taken in by the fruit of civilization, whether or not they were going to cultivate unnaturally (graft and propogate) or continue in the Garden of Eden munching on wild edibles. Of course, unnatural propagation made deserts of vast swaths of North Africa and is making deserts of pretty much everything it touches now.  So, however old that Adam-Eve-Apple story is, and it long predated Judaea-Christianity, it was a prescient warning.